Cyclorama

In the Pantheon de la Guerre in Paris there was an operation a month ago. A pair of silver shears, now glorified as relics, cut down the world's largest painting on canvas--a cyclorama, 400 feet long, at which tourists have stared for eight years. On it is a pictorial history of the World War-- cannon and weeping mothers in black, plunging airplanes and statesmen--a gigantic optical illusion as seen from the centre of the circular temple. Parts of it are painfully real. There are 6,000 figures, the creations of 22 artists, whose skill is photographic rather than impressionistic.

U. S. Ambassador to France Myron Timothy Herrick, who was lately painted into the picture in place of Col. Edward Mandell House, joined Paris bigwigs and thousands of school children to bid farewell to the cyclorama when it left Paris.

Last week, in an oaken crib 52 feet long and weighing ten tons, it arrived in Manhattan on the French liner Paris. It is to be exhibited by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in Madison Square Garden, scene of many a prize fight, hockey game, circus, but never before an art-lovers' nook. Later the epic in paint will go on a trip around the world and back to Paris.

Uglies

From Paris last week came despatches relating a plot among artists and literati to offset the continental pestilence of beauty contests. They planned, as counter scourge, an ugliness contest, with awards. "Beauty fades," said the plotters, "but ugliness remains."

Some years ago a Paris ugly contest was won by eminent contenders--Novelist Georges Ohnet, Critic Francisque Sarcey and M. Francois Paul Jules Grevy, one-time (1879-1887) President of the Republic. To attract entrants for this year's contest, the promoters made public speeches praising Aesop, Cicero, Socrates and other famed eyesores. Competitors soon came flocking--a fishmonger with warts; a bald female pinhead who claimed to have been in a circus; an Italian Jew with erysipelas; Mme. Grun, a scowling housewife, with photographs of a neighbor whose mouth, she vowed, would admit a whole orange; pock-marked taxi-drivers; a carp-eyed spinster with a goitre like a wasp's nest; a Belgian nun.

The judges waited eagerly, hoping that Mrs. Rosie Bevan (nee Wilmot) would put in an appearance. Mrs. Bevan, a peasant of Kent, England, claims to be "world's ugliest woman." In her heyday she won many a "quid" (pound Sterling) in British ugly matches; traveled thousands of miles with the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey circus, in whose sideshow she sat between Carrie Holt, "fat, fair and frivolous," and the Armless Wonder. Four times a mother, Mrs. Bevan used to affect white lace hats, woolen mittens, high laced shoes.

Too Old

A fortnight ago, judges sat to scrutinize creations submitted for the annual exhibition of the Royal Academy. To them came one John Taylor, 74, London sculptor, carrying a small object swaddled thickly.

Breathless, he explained, as with trembling hands he unwrapped, that at last, at long last--crash! At his feet lay the arduously wrought statuette of Sculptor Taylor's old age, in fragments.

Craftsmen assured the despondent old gentleman they could put his work together again. Silent, he shook his head. "I'm too old," he said, gathering up the broken bits, "my chances are gone," and he doddered out the door.

Commission

A $4,000,000 skyscraper should have a distinguished portrait in it. Clarence H. Mackay, President of the Postal Telegraph-Cable Co., decided Cardinal Hayes was fit subject for such a portrait, to be hung in the new Knights of Columbus club hotel, N. Y. And Sir John Lavery of London, thought Mr. Mackay, was a fit artist. Last week the commission was announced.